Freedom Seekers

In 1789, an advertisement appeared in the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser seeking Tom, who had run away from Simon Wilmer, near Chestertown, about December 1, 1788. A detailed description, characteristic of the era, was given of Tom. He was about eighteen, slightly over five feet tall, and had pock marks on his face from a bout with smallpox. He was described as speaking with a slight lisp and being “much addicted to drinking and pilfering.” His clothing was also included in the description. His owner offered four dollars if Tom was found in state, eight if found out of state.

Easter, age forty, reported as a “very tall, masculine, black negro” was advertised as a runaway in The Chestertown Gazette (Apollo) in September. The man who claimed her, Isaac Cannell, was a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors and also a renter of College lots. Cannell explained that Easter was “very apt to stutter when asked questions she cannot immediately answer”. He offered a four-dollar reward for her return.

Charlotte, held in slavery by Board Treasurer Joseph Wickes, ran away while she was hired out to a Mrs. Comegys. She was either found or returned on her own, because she was hired out the following year to College President Timothy Clowes. (See Presidents) Charlotte does not appear again in Wickes’s hiring accounts. However, records document Wickes paying fellow Board member Dr. Benjamin F. Houston for medical treatment for a slave named Charlotte. This may or may not the same Charlotte who tried to free herself in 1823.

When Jim ran away from Board President Ezekiel Chambers, the slaveholder wrote to his brother-in-law and law partner Joseph Wickes to ask for help in recovering his enslaved man. Jim appears to have left on New Year’s Eve, according to Chambers’s letter. The holiday season was a common time for enslaved people to leave, as they could be given time off between Christmas and New Year’s, sometimes even receive permission to visit family living at a distance. Chambers seemed confident that Jim would be found, suggesting that he knew or believed Jim had remained in the area. His next letter to Wickes reveals that Jim in fact had been found and that Chambers planned to sell him: “I am glad to hear you have put master Jim into safe quarters. He is a great rascal and I shall be pleased to get rid of him on almost any terms.”

The news “must have produced a shock, scarcely less stunning than an earthquake.” This was how abolitionist William Still imagined the reaction to the escape of Harriet Shephard, her five children, aunt, uncle, and three other enslaved people from Chestertown in October, 1855. The Shephard family’s experience was unusual–the majority of fugitives were young, unattached, and male. But something unusual was happening in Kent County–nearly seventy people fled from slavery in the 1850’s, about forty of them in the later months of 1855.

Who held in the Shephard family in slavery is not completely clear. Two modern sources name Washington College Board member George W.T. Perkins, citing as evidence the 1860 Slave Schedule in which Perkins listed five fugitives. But evidence also points to Perkins’s father-in-law and fellow Board member, Ezekiel F. Chambers. In the 1864 Record of Slaves, Chambers listed 57 slaves, including five matching the names and possible ages of the Shephard children. Although there is no Harriet listed, there is a “Hetty” of an appropriate age. One possibility is that the Shephards were owned by Chambers but were hired out or informally loaned to Perkins at the time of their escape. 

Leaving the night of the night of October 26, the group made its way north with the help of two carriages, traveling along an established Underground Railroad route to the station of Thomas Garrett in Wilmington. Garrett sent them on to Longwood, Pennsylvania, while he used the horses they had left to distract the men who arrived searching for them. As these men kept watch on Garrett’s house, the fugitives were able to travel through southeastern Pennsylvania to Graceanna Lewis’s station in Kimberton, Chester County. There, Lewis separated the group, sending Shephard and her children into upstate New York, bound for St. Catharines, Ontario.

First, though, they were all interviewed in Philadelphia by William Still of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. One of three young men who traveled with the Shephards, sixteen-year-old William Thomas Freeman, had taken on the alias Ezekiel Chambers, further evidence of Chambers’s connection to the group. Freeman gave his owner’s name as John Dwa. The Kent News, in reporting the flight of this group, stated that eight of the enslaved people were owned by John Duyer. A John Dwyer appears in the Kent County census, but not as a slaveholder, suggesting that he may have hired some of these people, perhaps as a tenant on land owned by Chambers or Perkins, both of whom owned farms outside Chestertown.

None of those interviewed told Still about assistance they had received in Kent County. Yet they almost certainly had help; the number of enslaved people escaping at this time suggests a level of organization. The Kent News expressed concern over African Americans holding camp meetings. Such religious occasions allowed free blacks and enslaved people to meet, share information, and–slaveholders feared–organize resistance. In this instance, such fears may have been warranted. Individual free blacks were also accused of helping slaves escape. The Kent News reported in October that a black man had been jailed, charged with “abducting” slaves, and added that, “one thing is left for the slave-owners of this county–if this underground railroad is not put a stop to, we advise them to ship all their negroes to the South.” In December, another free black man, John Brown, was arrested for helping enslaved people escape.  

But authorities may have missed those who aided the Shephard group. Part of William Still’s network included an enslaved man, George Wilmer, who lived in the northeastern part of the county, and helped fugitives reach Thomas Garrett. Garrett reported that Wilmer had assisted some twenty-five people within four months alone. Graceanna Lewis, who sheltered the Shephard family, wrote to Still that the group left behind a black woman who knew of their plan and intended destination. This may have been Harriet Tillison, a free black woman who traveled the Upper Shore and was suspected of helping slaves escape. She was tarred and feathered by the same mob who attacked white abolitionist James Bowers in 1858. Alternatively, the woman Lewis refers to could have been a relative of the Shephards. There were several free black people in the county named Sheppard, including Margaret, who worked as a servant in the Chestertown household of George W.T. Perkins.  

I am indebted to the research of David Armenti, of the Legacy of Slavery website and to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s website, “Family Ties on the Underground Railroad,” for this story.

In 1859, yet another person Ezekiel Chambers enslaved, a woman named Harriet Fuller, ran away with her husband Cornelius. Cornelius Fuller was enslaved by a different master, a not uncommon situation in Maryland, where the average size of slaveholding was small, often resulting in family members being forced to live apart. We don’t know the details of how the Fullers made their way north. It is possible that they left hurriedly when they had an opportunity, because they left behind their thirteen-year-old daughter Kitty. We do know what Harriet Fuller said about Ezekiel Chambers: “He is no man for freedom, bless you. He owned more than any other man in that part of the country; he sells sometimes, and he hired out a great many; he would hire them to any kind of master, if he half killed you.”

Harriet and Cornelius Fuller reached Philadelphia where they were helped by William Still and his Underground Railroad network in making their way out of the country and eventually settling in St. Catharines, Ontario. They appear in the 1861 Canadian census, with Cornelius (age 34) listed as a laborer, Harriet (age 30) not employed. St. Catharines, on the western shore of Lake Ontario just across the border from Niagara Falls, was a market town with a population of about seven thousand, spurred by the building of the Welland Canal. It was known as a city of refuge for fugitives, who could find assistance from the Refugee Slaves’ Friends Society, an interracial group founded in 1852. One member was Harriet Tubman, who had escaped from Maryland’s Eastern Shore several years earlier. Tubman rented a house to shelter recent arrivals. Next door to Tubman’s house was the British Methodist Episcopal Church (Salem Chapel) where she worshipped; the church basement served a temporary shelter for recent arrivals. It is quite likely that the Fullers encountered Tubman, even worshipped with her, as the census lists them as members of the Episcopal Methodist Church.

What happened to Kitty Fuller is unknown. According to Still’s account, she was thirteen when her parents left Chestertown in 1859. Ezekiel Chambers’s 1860 census listing for Chestertown shows one enslaved girl aged fourteen and three girls aged fifteen, any of whom could be Kitty. 

With research contributed by Cassy Sottile, Class of 2019